To have a touch of the Irish

To draw on Irish traditions

My old-fashioned remedies were particularly successful, making me rejoice that I was of Ireland, where bone-setters and wise women could cure all and sundry.

Daisy Bates (1859 - 1951) The Passing Of The Aborigines: A Lifetime Spent Among The Natives Of Australia London: Murray, 1938, p. 233

To be contrary

She was Irish, it suddenly dawned on me. That explained everything, the idealism, endurance, self-sacrifice, the prejudice and pride, her fearlessness ‘agin the government’ and her wilfulness ‘nohow contrariwise;, all her intuitions and inhibitions, her delight in folk-lore, her perpetual adoration of royalty, and at the same time the life-long loyalty to the lost cause of a lost people with all their sins and sorrows in her always loving heart and mind.

To believe in empire

Anthropology can be given its due place, though in the break-down of all their old tribal laws through contact with civilisation it is scarcely necessary. What they need most is the governance and fatherhood of the Empire-makers, men of the sterling British type that brought India and Africa into our Commonwealth of Nations—a Havelock, a Raffles, a Lugard, a Nicholson, a Lawrence of Arabia.